Role Of Senate In Canada

The Senate plays a key role in tandem with the House of Commons, in the operation of Canada’s government, some people think that the Senate should be abolished; however without the Senate, “The right to bear arms” could become true for Canada. The Senate should be reformed; abolishing or keeping the Senate at its current state would be unjust. The current Senate is not elected, effective, nor equal.

It has become widely accepted that Canada uses a first past the post electoral system. However, this system may not be in the best interest of Canada any more. There are many reasons why Canada should change its electoral system to a mixed member proportional one, a variant of proportional representation. With a first past the post system, the elected officials will always be of the majority and this excludes minorities from fair representation. Adopting MMP can create stronger voter turnouts, more personal campaigning, better individual representation, and better party selection. John Hiemstra and Harold Janson, are both in favour of a MMP electoral system. They understand that with the switch, the citizens will get more representation in

As time goes on, some countries become more relevant in the global sphere while others start to fade away. Canada is a country that only becomes more relevant as time goes on. Since being granted full sovereignty, Canada has had a growing role as a major world player. Much of their international growth has to do with its close ties to the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the country has also undergone huge change and refocusing on a domestic level. With influence from both Europe and the United States, Canada has a very unique system of governing. This paper will focus on a few major areas of Canada. It will look into the history of Canada, the structure of its government, its politics, and many of the major issues it faces today.

The electoral system in Canada is also known as a “first past the post” system. “First past the post” means the candidate with the highest number of votes wins the congressional seat, whereas the other candidates with a lower number of votes don’t get any representation. There are many cons to this system that will be highlighted throughout this essay. I will argue that the electoral system requires reform due to the discrepancies between the percentage of popular votes and the number of seats won. Canada’s electoral system has many problems and is not seen as fully democratic since it has provided poor representation for both candidates that win and lose. Candidates can win seats with less than 50% of votes, meaning that even if the majority of the nation, or province did not vote for the candidate they still win the election as they consume the highest number of votes among the parties. FPTP allows two people in different ridings to get the same number of votes with the outcome of one winner since the distribution of votes and seats are unequal. The system can also encourage strategic voting such as not voting for whom you think is the best fit but voting for the candidate that seems most likely to win in order to beat candidate you dislike. FPTP leads to an imbalance of power and has the potential for corruption.

Many modern democracies have a bicameral legislature which is a body of government that consist of two legislative chambers. The bicameral legislature provides representation for both, the citizens of the country and the state legislature on a federal level. The Canadian parliament has two chambers, the lower chamber which is an elected House of Commons and the upper chamber which is the non-elected Senate. The Canadian Senate is assumed to be a “sober second thought” [3] on government legislation which is a phrase that describes the Senate’s role in promoting and defending regional interest. There has been an immense amount of the public outcry regarding the Senate after spending scandal that occurred during the recent election period. A question that has induced discussion in parliament is whether the Canadian Senate should be reformed or not? This issue divides the population in half because of differing views. Some political parties want the abolition of the Senate to occur while other parties would like to have an elected Senate because provinces are not represented equally. A method of deciding the faith of the current Senate, the functions of the Senate and objectives of Senate reform should be defined. The assumptions about the purpose of the Senate, problems of the current Senate, the goal of Senate reform and the method of achieving the reform may help provide a consensus on how the Senate should be reformed.

Canada’s friendly neighbor to the South, the US, has an electoral system that is composed of 3 separate elections, one of them deciding the head of state. The president elected by the people and he or she is the determining person of the country’s political system. In the US runs like a majority system” In Canada, however, elections are held slightly differently. Citizens vote for a Member of Parliament in a 308-seat house and candidates win not by a majority, unlike in the US, but by a plurality. This means that a candidate can actually win by simply having more votes than the other candidates. This method of representative democracy, in general, does not cause too much controversy in a global scope but has

The original purpose of the senate was two-fold, firstly they were meant to add some degree of regional representation to the debate. The one-hundred and five senators are separated into regions with a set number coming from each of the regions of the country. Secondly, the senate was meant to be in the words of Sir John a Macdonald “a chamber for a sober second thought” , that is to say that it provides a second opinion on bills and any other legislation that has passed through the house of commons. The modern senate however does not fulfill these two functions adequately anymore, instead the regional distribution is not done equally, so there are areas that are very over represented and others such as British Columbia that are woefully under represented . And the sober second thought that the senate is meant to offer is instead turning into a more symbolic confirmation similar to the royal assent that the Governor General gives in the name of the Queen. This second issue happens because the senate lacks the legitimacy of the house of commons because they are not elected. In modern times the public is weary of a body of un elected officials affecting the legislation of their chosen elected officials. Now to effectively reform the senate there are three main areas that will need to change namely the distribution of seats, the way in which senators are chosen, and the affiliations of the senators themselves. Firstly, the original purpose of regional representation in the senate was to counteract the representation by population in the house of commons. This helped to ensure that French speaking Quebecois, and the western provinces were not marginalized by the English speaking majority and the power of Ontario in national policy making. The distribution of the seats is done as follows, first the country was split into four regions the Maritimes,

Do you feel your government is fair? Does it manage the issues properly, with careful thought, and an open, objective mind? Is it effective? Do you feel that the Senate is a “sober chamber of second thought?” Do you feel that the best interests of the Canadian public are always preserved in the current model of our governance? If so, you’re mistaken. Under our present governance, we have two houses, the House of Commons, and the Senate, the reform to the latter being the main topic of

Part I: Mandatory Long Essay Question (24 points) In The Value of A just Society, Pierre Elliott Trudeau explained that the Constitution Act of 1982’s primary goal was to protect individual rights rather than collective rights. Furthermore, he thought territorially concentrated minorities should not be given special rights. Analyse the linguistic rights and the Aboriginal rights jurisprudence since 1982 and determine if Trudeau’s constitutional objective has materialized. Your answer should be no more than 1500 words.

In theory, the Parliament is the most important institution in the Canadian government and all members of the parliament are equal. The Prime Minister is supposed to be primus inter pares, meaning first among equals. But over the years, the cabinet has become more institutionalized and less departmentalized. Hence the Prime Minister’s power has increased over the years. Canada is the one of the most decentralized federations in the

Under the Canadian constitution, the selection process of senators is done by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister who appoints officials. Ultimately, this method has gained an unpopularity and even a call to action to abolish Senate. However, Canadians should be engaging in the work of reconstructing our democratic institution. We should be able to trust our organizations by choosing the officials in them. In the study of the Senate, Bakvis (2001) argues, “an elected Senate would garner the greatest support, and in starting with a clean slate makes it easier to adopt [regional] representation” (p.72). With the availability of choosing representatives instead of the prime minister simply appointing senators, the face of the Senate of Canada can be designed to produce a more legitimate body by an electoral system.

Today, Ontario and Quebec have maintained their 24 member senatorial status. The four Western provinces have 6 members each. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both have 10 seats. Prince Edward Island was given 4 out of the original 24 Maritime senators. Together, Newfoundland and Labrador have a total of 6 members. Finally, Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories stand in the equation with 1 senator apiece. Along with the Senate`s original intentions, the principle of equality between the provinces is evidently lost. The Senate primarily fails because it was formerly created to balance out the representation by population which lies in the House of Commons however currently only seems to reinforce it. In fact, Canada’s central provinces, Ontario and Quebec, account for 60 percent of the seats in the House of Commons and almost half of the seats in the Senate at 46 percent.5 The inadequacy of regional representation is emphasized as the Canada West Foundation clearly states: “Canada is the only democratic federal system in the world in which the regions with the largest populations dominate both houses of the national legislature.“6 With an unelected Senate that no longer fulfills its role of equal regional representation and a House of Commons grounded on the representation of provinces proportional to their population, the legitimacy of Parliament has become a

The consequences of the senate not being able to reform have been western provinces feeling like they are left out in the process of decision-making, policy making and other legislative decisions made by the federal government. “The senate was envisioned as a legislative body that would serve several functions in addition to legislation”(Lawlor, Crandol,2013). The senate is refereed as the sober second thought in terms of legislation review but the second thought is rarely concerning the western provinces. Western alienation is caused by regional misrepresentation which is mainly caused by the senate. According to Lawlor, some provincial governments have challenged the unilateral approach by the senate to restructure itself. However the Supreme Court Of Canada will consider a reference case on the constitutional status of senate reform in November 2013. This means that the senate may be reformed this year, the western provinces would prefer a senate that can represent their interests. The senate may need a reform in order to remove the discrimination of the west but in order to do this, it must reform the whole committee that the senate works with.

There is a fundamental problem with the democratic process in Canada. This problem is rooted within our electoral system. However, there is a promising solution to this issue. Canada should adopt the mixed-member proportional representation electoral system (MMP) at the federal level if we wish to see the progression of modern democracy. The failure to do so will result in a stagnant political system that is caught in the past and unable to rise to the contemporary challenges that representative democracies face. If Canada chooses to embrace the MMP electoral system it will reap the benefits of greater proportionality, prevent the centralization of power that is occurring in Parliament and among political parties through an increased

For decades, Canadians have been defending their right to have a fair and open electoral system. Since its creation in 1867, Canada has been proud to call itself a true democratic country, but today there would be many people who disagree with this statement. The Canadian electoral system, which uses First Past The Post (FPTP), has come under scrutiny for not being as fair as it claims to be. Over the past couple of decades, many countries have switched their system to Proportional Representation (PR) or some form of it. Based on successful results in other nations, Canada’s current FPTP system should change to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), which is a form of Proportional Representation, as it will allow for more fair elections. The intent of this paper is to outline how an electoral reform from First Past the Post to Proportional Representation or Mixed-Member Proportional, will lead to more confidence in the government, more accurate seat-vote percentage, and better overall representation of the population.